


The Grave-sow

by Rook_Rabble



Category: Dansih folklore
Genre: Child Murder, Curses, ghost pig, nightrides, pig sow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 16:55:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20029177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rook_Rabble/pseuds/Rook_Rabble
Summary: It is never the child's fault, it never asked to be here in the first place. That can only be for the parents' expense, but this time the child has really got the bill: stay in the dark for 100 years, when you wake up again, on four legs, the tail in the cloud and the snout on the ground, warn the living about the death and the misfortune that is waiting.





	1. An unforgivable deed

**Author's Note:**

> Phrases with underlined __________ are my comment for the situation.

**The Grave-sow**

The Grave-sow was a ghost-pig that was found in Danish folk, also called (Glumsoen)''dark sow'' it could, like the Helhorse and the Church-lamb, be close to the church, and when some saw it, it never failed that one will died in the parish. As a deadly warning, it was also called ''Church sow''.

The Grave-sow is larger than a regular sow and was often shiny white or completely black. It had shiny staring eyes, and on its razor-sharp back, bristling brushes grew. It came out at night and ran gruntingly with its face toward the ground, as if it was searched for someone. Sometimes it ran around headless, and other times it went around with piglets.

**The unwanted**

Sometimes the Grave-sow was perceived as the ghost of a child who had not been buried in the cemetery. It could be an unwanted child who had been murdered in clandestinely . The ghost-pig continued to show until the body was found and buried in consecrated soil. The poor, restless soul gets after 100 years an opportunity to return in physical form, as a horrible creature that warns death and misfortune. The Grave-sow will roam around the town at night on its way up to the place where the child was buried. Therefore, the Grave-sow can also be urged to rest again if you dig up the child and give it a Christian burial. If too long, the curse can no longer be raised.

The Grave-sow is a creature that notifies great misfortune. Many stories tells of people who have seen the pig, and since then experienced the world's death and disasters. Even for all these ghost animals, are they're man-made. But the Grave-sow differs from the others. The Grave-sow is, as described, a child's soul that goes on. The Helhorse and the Church-lamb, on the other hand, is a so-called Church grim: an animal that was buried alive when the church was built, and should stand as a protection for the church building. Another difference is that the Grave-sow itself can be extremely dangerous.

**When the time runs out, food will appease **

On Samsø, tales of a huge black sow with a back like a saw, It could kill a human by running between his legs and splitting the person from below up with it's razor-sharp back. When it runs, it cleaved everything in its way and nothing could stop it. ''Yes, it sounds right. I once tried to stop our sow. You might as well try to stop a missil''. And she was quite the normal pig.

Although the Grave-sow looked vicious, it rarely did any harm. However, it could be dangerous for the people who carried purses made of pig pancreas. But maybe you could appease the ghost, in many places in Denmark there has been a custom - right up to our own time - that some wheat was left on the field when corn was harvested. You could not take them, because they were to the Grave-sow.


	2. The strange pig / The three daughters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phrases with underlined __________ are my comment for the situation.
> 
> Follow the sow  
They say the third is the charm

**The strange pig**

A woman in Skensved near Køge heard one night a pig's pipe outside the window. The man was not at home, and they had a sow with piglets, the wife stood up from the bed to grab the pig. She ran after it, but it slipped out under the gate and out onto the road. The wife followed, but she couldn't catch it. The pig eventually entered the church gate and into the cemetery. The wife became a little strange to fashion, and even though she was not afraid, she did not dare enter the cemetery at night. She therefore went back to the farm and to the pigsty to count the pigs. But there wasn't a single one missing. The next day she asked all the neighbors if they were missing a pig, but all answered no. The pig kept coming every night, the man told it to the old priest. The priest, who was wiser than most, replied: '' Well it is just the ghost of a child who is killed and buried in secret and now seeks to enter Christian soil. ''This sounds like a case for the murder investigation, which happens all the way back in the dark ages'' If you want to be free from it, watch a night or two and see where the pig comes from. There you must dig. If you find a child's body, you must bury it in the cemetery. Then you will be free from it.'' Ok, Alright, got it, Priest Of The Year! The man and the wife did as the pastor advised them, and they also found the body of an infant buried under an old apple tree. They buried the child in the cemetery, and since that day the pig never came again.

**The three daughters **

Niel Petersen's wife said that when her mother was about 11 years old, she was sent to Vordingborg. Here she had to learn different kinds of stitching from an aunt. The aunt had three daughters living at home. They lived in a house surrounded by a large, lovely garden. The garden was closed on all sides. One evening, they were sitting and sewing, they saw an unusually large sow. It went just outside the windows. People in the city said it was probably a grave-sow that warned the daughters' death. Actually, they would not have been predicted, but they had been anyway. Half a year after the sow had appeared in the garden, the three daughters died. The mother, who cared much of the three daughters, soon died of grief. Something tells me someone in the town, might have a ''chip'' on the shoulder at those girls.


End file.
